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Wednesday, October 15, 2014
October 13, 2014: Threat Outbreak Alert: Fake Payment Information Email Messages on September 24, 2013
Search: Not Provided: What Remains, Keyword Data Options, the Future
Occam's Razor
by Avinash Kaushik
In
late 2011, Google announced an effort to make search behavior more
secure. Logged-in users were switched to using httpS from http. This
encrypted their search queries from any prying eyes, and kept from being
passed on to websites the users visits after seeing search results.
This led to the problem we, Marketers, SEOs, Analysts, fondly refer to as not provided .
Following revelations of NSA activities via Mr. Snowden, Google has now switched almost all users to secure search, resulting in even more user search queries showing up as not provided in all web analytics tools.
Yahoo! has recently announced switching to httpS as standard for all mail users, indicating secure search might follow next. That of course will mean more referring keyword data will disappear.
At the moment it is not clear whether Bing, Baidu, Yandex and others will move to similarly protect users’ search privacy; if and when they do, the result will be loss of even more keyword-level user behavior data.
Initially, I was a little conflicted about the whole not provided affair.
As an analyst, I was upset that this change would hurt my ability to analyze the effectiveness of my beloved search engine optimization (SEO) efforts – which are really all about finding the right users using optimal content strategies.
But it is difficult to not look at the wider picture. Repressive (and some not-overtly repressive) regimes around the world aggressively monitor user search behavior (and more). This can place many of our peer citizens in grave danger. As a citizen of the world, I was happy that Google and Yahoo! want to protect user privacy.
I'm a lot less conflicted now. I've gone through the five stages in the Kubler-Ross model. Besides, I've also come to realize that there is a lot I can still do!
In this post I want to share four angles on secure search:
1. Implications of Secure Search Decision.
No keyword data in analytics tools.
We are headed towards having zero referring keywords from Google and, perhaps, other search engines.
This impacts all digital analytics tools, regardless of what company
and whether they use javascript or log files or magic beans to collect
data.
Depending on the mobile device and browser you are using (for example, Safari since iOS 6), you have already been using secure search for a while regardless of the search engine you use. So that data has been missing for some time.
There are a number of "hacks" out there with promises of getting close enough keyword data, or for marrying not provided with some of the remaining data and landing pages. These are well meaning, but almost always yield zero value or worse drive you in a sub-optimal direction. Please been careful if you choose to use them.
No keyword data in competitive intelligence/SEO tools.
Perhaps you (like me) use competitive intelligence or SEO tools to monitor keyword performance. For example, for L'Oreal:
Secure Search will also impact data in these tools. It will be
increasingly distorted because it will reflect only traffic from the
small audience of visitors who are not yet using secure search or are
using other non-secure search engines or only the type of people who
allow their behavior to be 100% monitored – including SSL/httpS. Sample
and sampling bias.
You can read this post to learn how these tools collect data: The Definitive Guide To (8) Competitive Intelligence Data Sources.
I really loved having this data. It was such a great way to see what competitors were doing or where I was beating them on paid or organic or brand or category terms. Sadly, it does not matter which tool you use. These tools will only show you a more distorted view of reality. Please be very careful about what you do with keyword data from these tools (though they provide a lot of other data, all of which was of the same quality as in the past).
[sidebar]
These changes impact my AdWords spend sub-optimally. A lot of the keywords I used to add to my campaigns came from the long, long tail I saw in my organic search data (I would take the best performers there and use PPC to get more traffic) and from competitive intelligence research. With both of these sources gone, my AdWords spend may take a dive because I can't find these surprising keywords — even using the tools you'll see me mention below! How is this in Google's interest?
[/sidebar]
No keyword-level conversion analysis.
We have a lot of wonderful detailed data at a keyword level when we log into SiteCatalyst or WebTrends or Google Analytics. Bounce Rates, % New Visits, Visit Duration, Goal Conversions, Average Order Value.
All this data will no longer be available for organic search keywords.
As hinted above, our ability to understand the long tail — often as much as 80% of search traffic — will be curtailed. We can guess our brand terms and product keywords, but the wonderful harvest of category-type, and beyond, keywords is gone.
Current keyword data is only temporarily helpful.
Remember: On a daily basis 15% of the queries on Google have never been seen before by the search engine. Daily! For all 15 years of Google's existence!
That is one reason the data we have for the last year or so, even as not provided ramped up, might only be temporarily helpful in our analysis.
Another important reason historical data becomes stale pretty quickly is that any nominally functioning business will have new products, new content, new business priorities, and all that impacts your search strategy.
Finally, with every change in the search engine interface the way people use search changes. This in turn mandates new SEO (and PPC) strategies, if we don't want to fail.
So, use the data you have today for a little while to guesstimate your SEO performance or optimize your website. But know that the view you have will become stale and provide a distorted view of reality pretty soon.
2. What Is Not Going Away. #silverlinings
While we are losing our ability to do detailed keyword analysis, we are retaining our ability to do strategic analysis. Search engine optimization continues to be important, and can still get a macro understanding of performance and identify potentially valuable keywords.
Aggregated search engine level analysis.
The Multi-Channel Funnels folder in Google Analytics contains the Top Conversion Paths report. At the highest level, across visits by focusing on unique people, the report shows the role search plays in driving conversions.
You can see how frequently it is the starting point for a later conversion, you can see how frequently it is in the middle, and you can see how frequently it is the last click.
I like starting with this report because it allows us to have a
smarter beyond-the-last-click discussion and answer these questions:
What is the complete role of Search in the conversion process? How does
paid search interplay with organic search?
From there, jump to my personal favorite report in MCF, Assisted Conversions.
We can now look at organic and paid search differently, and we are able to see the complete value of both. We can see how often search is the last click prior to conversions, and how often it assists with other conversions.
The reason I love the above view is that for each channel, I'm able
to present our management team a simple, yet powerful, understanding of
the contribution of our marketing channels – including search.
Selfishly, now we can show the complete value, in dollars and cents, we deliver via SEO.
[Bonus: For more on next steps and attribution modeling please see: Multi-Channel Attribution Modeling: The Good, Bad and Ugly Models.]
If you are interested in only the last-click view of activities (please don't be interested in this!), you can of course look at your normal Channels or All Traffic reports in Google Analytics.
This is a simple custom report I use to look at the aggregated view:
As the report above demonstrates, you can still report on your other
metrics, like Unique Visitors, Bounce Rates, Per Visit Value and many
others, at an aggregated level. You can see how Google is doing, and you
can see how Google Paid and Organic are doing.
So from the perspective of reporting organic search performance to senior management, you are all set. Where we are out of luck is taking things down from here to the keyword level. Yes, there will still be some data in the keyword report, but since not provided is an unknown unknown, you have no idea what that segment represents.
Organic landing pages report.
Search engine optimization is all about pages and the content in those pages.
You can use a custom landing pages report (click that link to download) and apply your organic search segment to that report to get a view that looks like this:
The top landing pages getting traffic from organic search. And of course our Acquisition, Behavior, Outcome metrics.
See Page Value there? Now you also know how much value is delivered when each of these pages is viewed by someone who came from organic search.
So let's say you spent the last few weeks optimizing pages #2, #3 and #5; well, now you can be sad that they are delivering the lowest page value from organic search. Feel sad.
Or, just tell your boss/client: "No, no, no, you misunderstood. I was optimizing page #4!" : )
The custom landing pages report also includes the ability drill down to keyword level, just click on the page you are interested in and you'll see this:
With every passing day this drilldown will become more and more useless. But for now, it is there if you want to see it.
Let me repeat a point. I've noticed some of our peer SEOs making strong recommendations to take action based on the keywords you are able to see beyond not provided. I'm afraid that is a career-limiting move. You have no idea what these words represent – head, mid, tail, something else – or what is in the blank not provided bucket. Be very careful.
Paid search keyword analysis report.
We all of course still have access to keyword level analysis for our paid search spend.
There is one really interesting bit in the paid search reports that you can use for SEO purposes.
When you submit your keywords and bids, the search engine will match them against user search queries. In Google Analytics you have Keyword, in your AdWords report, as above, but if you create a custom report you can drill down from Keyword to Matched Search Query. The latter is what people actually type. So for "chrome notebook," above, if I look at the Matched Search Query I can see all 25 variations the users typed. This is very useful for SEO.
You can download my custom report, it is #2 in this post: Paid Search/AdWords Custom Reports
Beyond this, be judicious about what inferences you draw from your paid search performance. Some distinguished SEO experts have advocated that you should use the distribution of visits/conversions/profits of your AdWords keywords and use that to make decisions about effectiveness of your SEO efforts. Others are advising you to bid on AdWords and guesstimate various things about SEO performance. Sadly these are also career-limiting moves.
Why?
When you look at your AdWords data, you have no idea which of these four scenarios is true for your business:
And if you don't know which is true — and you really won't with not provided in your way — is it prudent to use your AdWords performance to judge SEO? I would humbly suggest not.
If you want to stress test this,…. go back to your 2011 (pre-not provided) data for paid and organic and see what you can find. And remember since then Google has made sixteen trillion changes to how both paid and organic search work, and your business has at least made 25.
Don't assume that your SEO strategy should reflect the prioritizations implied by your AdWords keyword data. The reason SEO worked so well is that you would get traffic you might not have known/guessed/realized you wanted/deserved.
3. Alternatives For Keyword Data Analysis.
With not provided eliminating almost all of our keyword data, initially for some search engines/browsers and likely soon from all, we face challenges in understanding performance. Luckily we can avail ourselves of a couple of alternative, if imperfect/incomplete, options.
Webmaster Tools.
Here are the challenges Google's Webmaster Tools solves: Which search queries does my website show up for, and what does my click-through rate look like?
I know this might sound depressing, but this is the only place you'll see any SEO performance data at a keyword level. Look at the CTR column. If you do lots of good SEO — you work on the page title, url, page excerpt, author image and all that wonderful stuff — this is where you can see whether that work is getting you more clicks. You work harder on SEO, you raise your rankings (remember don't focus on overall page rank, it is quite value-deficient), you'll see higher CTRs.
You will see approximately 2,000 search queries. These are not all
the search queries for which your site shows up. (More on this in the
bonus section below.)
There are a couple of important things to remember when you use this data.
If you go back in history and do comparative analysis for last year's data when not provided was low, you'll notice that your top 100 keywords in Google Analytics or Site Catalyst are not quite the same as those in WebMaster Tools. They use two completely different sources of data and data processing.
Be aware that even if you sort by Clicks (and always sort by clicks), the order in which these queries appear is not a true indication of their importance (in GA when I could see it, I would see a different top 25 as an example). The numbers are also soft or directional. For example, even with 90% not provided Google Analytics told me I had 500 visits from "avinash kaushik" and not 150 clicks as shown above.
Despite these two caveats, Webmaster Tools should be a key part of your SEO performance analysis.
It is my hope that if this is how search engines are comfortable sharing keyword level data, that over time they will invest resources in this tool to increase the number of keywords and improve the data processing algorithms
Our good friends at Microsoft also provide Bing Webmaster Tools, and don't forget the excellent Yandex Webmaster Tools. Take keyword performance data from anyone who'll give it to you reliably.
[Bonus]
1. Google's Webmaster Tools only stores your data for 90 days. If you would like to have this data for a longer time period, you can download it as a csv. Another alternative is to download it automatically using Python. Please see this post for instructions: Automatically download webmaster tools search queries data
2. GWT only shows you data for approximately 2,000 queries which returned your site in search results. Hence it only displays a sub-set of your query behavior data. The impact of this is in the top part of the table above, Impressions and Clicks. During this time period my site received 1,800k Impressions in search results, but GWT is only showing data for 140k of those impressions because it is only displaying 2,574 user queries. Ditto for Clicks. If I download all the data for the 2k queries shown in GWT, that will show behavior for just 8,000 of the 50,000 clicks my site received from Google in this time period. Data for 42,000 clicks is not shown because those queries are beyond the 2k limit in GWT.
Update: 3. In his comment below Jeff Smith shares a tip on how to structure your GWT account to possibly expanding the dataset to get more information. Please check it out.
Update: 4. Another great tip. Kartik's comment highlights that you can link your GWT account with your AdWords account and get paid and organic click data for the same keyword right inside AdWords. Click to read a how-to guide and available metrics.
[/Bonus]
Google Keyword Planner.
The challenge Google Keyword Planner solves: What keywords (user search queries) should my search engine optimization program focus on?
In the Keyword Planner you have several options to identify the most recent keywords — the most relevant keywords — to your website. The simplest way to start is to look for keyword recommendations for a specific keyword.
I choose the "search for new keyword and ad group ideas" section and in the landing page part type in the URL I'm interested in. Just as an example, I’m using the Macy's women's activewear page:
A quick click of the Get Ideas button gives us … the ideas!
I can choose to look at the Ad Group ideas or the Keyword Ideas.
There are several specific applications for this delightful data.
First, it tells me the keywords for which I should be optimizing this specific page. I can go and look at the words I'm focused on, see if I have all the ones recommended by the Keyword Planner, and if not, I can include them for the next round of search engine optimization efforts.
Second, I have some rough sense for how important each word is, as judged by Avg. Monthly Searches. The volume can help me prioritize which keywords to focus on first.
Third, if this is my website (and Macy's is not!), I can also see my Ad Impression Share. Knowing how often my ad shows up for each keyword helps me prioritize my search engine optimization efforts.
It would be difficult to do this analysis for all your website pages. I recommend the top 100 landing pages (check that the 100 include your top product pages and your top brand landing pages — if not, add them to the list).
With the advent of not provided we lost our ability to know which keywords we should focus on for which page; the Google Keyword Planner helps solve that problem to an extent.
You don't have to do your analysis just by landing pages. If you would like, you can have the tool give you data for specific keywords you are interested in. Beyond landing pages, my other favorite option is to use the Product Category to get data for a whole area of my business.
For example, suppose I'm assisting a non-profit hospital with its analytics and optimization efforts. I'll just drill down to the Health category, then the Health Care Service sub-category and finally the Hospitals & Health Clinics sub-sub-category:
Press Get Ideas button and — boom! — I have my keywords. In this
case, I've further refined the list to only focus on a particular part
of the US:
I have the keyword list I need to focus my search engine optimization
efforts. Not based on what the Hospital CEO wants or what a random page
analysis or your mom suggested, but rather based on what users in our
geographic area are actually typing into a search engine!
A quick note of caution: As you play with the Keyword Planner, you'll bump into a graph like this one for your selected keyword or ad group ideas. It shows Google's estimate of how many possible clicks you could get at a particular cost per click.
Other than giving you some sense for traffic, this is not a relevant
graph. I include it here just to show you that it is out there and I
don't want you to read too much into it.
Google Trends.
The challenge Google Trends tool solves: What related and fastest-rising keywords should I focus on for my SEO program?
Webmaster tools focuses us on clicks and the Keyword Planner helps us with keywords to target by landing pages. Google Trends is valuable because it helps expand our keyword portfolio (top searches) and the keywords under which we should be lighting a fire (rising searches).
Here's an example. I'm running the SEO program for Liberty Mutual, Geico, AAA or State Farm. My most important query is car insurance (surprise!). I can create a report in Google Trends for the query "car insurance" and look at the past 12 months of data for the United States.
The results are really valuable:
I can see which brand shows up at the top (sadly it’s not me, it’s
Progressive), I can see the queries people are typing, and I can see the
fastest-rising queries and realize I should worry about Safeco and
Arbella. I can also see that Liberty Mutual's massive TV blitz is having
an impact in increasing brand awareness and Geico seems to be having
support problems with so many people looking for its phone number.
I can click on the gear icon at the top right and download a bunch more data, beyond the top ten. I can also focus on different countries, or just certain US states, or filter for the last 90 days.
I can also focus on different countries, or just some of the states in the US or only for the last 90 days. The options are endless.
There are two specific uses for this data.
First, I get the top and rising queries to consider for my SEO program. Not just queries either, but deeper insights like brand awareness, etc.
Second, I can use this to figure out the priorities for the content I need to create on my website to take advantage of evolving consumer interests and preferences.
If you have an ability to react quickly (not real-time, just quickly) the Google Trends tool can be a boon to your SEO efforts.
Competitive Intelligence / SEO Tools.
Competitive intelligence tools solve the challenge of knowing: What are my competitors up to? What is happening in my product/industry category when it comes to search?
SEO tools solve the challenge of knowing: What can I do to improve my page ranks, inbound links, content focus, social x, link text y, etc.?
There are many good competitive intelligence tools out there. They will continue to be useful for other analysis (referring domains, top pages, display ads, overall traffic etc.), but as I mentioned at the top of this post, the search keyword level data will attain a even lower quality. Here's a report I ran for L'Oreal:
If you see any keyword level data in these tools, you should assume
that you are getting a distorted view of reality. Remember, all other
data in these tools is fine. Just not any of the keyword level data.
There are many good SEO tools out there that provide a wide set of reports and data. As in the case of the CI tools, many other reports in these SEO tools will remain valuable but not the keyword level reports. As not provided moves toward 100% due to search switching to https, they will also lose their ability to monitor referring keywords (along with aforementioned repressive and sometimes not-so-overtly repressive regimes).
When the keywords are missing, the SEO tools will have to figure out if the recommendations they are making about "how to rank better with Bing/Google/Yahoo!" or "do a, b, c and you will get more keyword traffic" are still valid. At a search engine level they will remain valid, but at a keyword level they might become invalid very soon (if they’re not already)
Even at a search engine level, causality (in other words, “do x and y money will come to you”) will become tenuous and the tools might switch to correlations. That is hard and poses a whole new set of challenges.
Some of the analysis these tools start to provide might take on the spirit of: "We don't know whether factors m, n, and q that we are analyzing/recommending, or all this link analysis and link text and brand mentions and keyword density, specifically impact your search engine optimization/ranking at a keyword level, or if our recommendations move revenue, but we believe they do and so you should do them."
There is nothing earth-shatteringly wrong about it. It introduces a fudge factor, a risky variable. I just want you to be aware of it. And if you want to feel better about this, just think of how you make decisions about offline media – that is entirely based on faith!
Just be aware of the implications outlined above, and use the tools/recommendations wisely.
4. Possible Future Solutions.
Let's try to end on a hopeful note. Keyword data is almost all gone, what else could take its place in helping us understand the impact of our search engine optimization efforts? Just because the search engines are taking keywords away does not mean SEO is dead! If anything, it is even more important.
Here are a couple of ideas that come to my mind as future solutions/approaches. (Please add yours via comments below.)
Page "personality" analysis.
My effort in this post has been to show that things are not as dire as you might have imagined (see the not going away and alternatives sections). We can fill some gaps, we can still bring focus to our strategy. I'm also cautiously optimistic that there will be future solutions that we have not yet imagined that will address the void of keyword level performance analysis. And I know for a fact that many of us will embrace controlled experimentation and thereby rock more and charge more for our services or get promoted.
Carpe diem!
As always, it is your turn now.
I'm sure you have thoughts/questions on why not provided happened. You might not have made it through all the five stages Kubler-Ross model yet. That is OK, I respect your questions and your place in the model. Sadly I'm not in a position to answer your questions about that specifically. So, to the meat of the post …
Is there an implication of not having keyword level data that I missed covering? From the data we do have access to, search engine level, is there a particular type of analysis that is proving to be insightful? Are there other alternative data sources you have found to be of value? If you were the queen of the world and could create a future solution, what would it do?
Please share your feedback, incredible ideas, practical solutions and OMG you totally forgot that thing thoughts via comments.
Thank you.
PS: Here's my post on how to analyze keyword performance in a world where only a part of the data was in not provided bucket: Smarter Data Analysis of Google's https (not provided) change: 5 Steps. For all the reasons outlined in the above post this smarter data analysis option might not work any more. But if only a small part of your data, for any reason, is not provided, please check out the link.
by Avinash Kaushik
Search: Not Provided: What Remains, Keyword Data Options, the Future
In
late 2011, Google announced an effort to make search behavior more
secure. Logged-in users were switched to using httpS from http. This
encrypted their search queries from any prying eyes, and kept from being
passed on to websites the users visits after seeing search results. This led to the problem we, Marketers, SEOs, Analysts, fondly refer to as not provided .
Following revelations of NSA activities via Mr. Snowden, Google has now switched almost all users to secure search, resulting in even more user search queries showing up as not provided in all web analytics tools.
Yahoo! has recently announced switching to httpS as standard for all mail users, indicating secure search might follow next. That of course will mean more referring keyword data will disappear.
At the moment it is not clear whether Bing, Baidu, Yandex and others will move to similarly protect users’ search privacy; if and when they do, the result will be loss of even more keyword-level user behavior data.
Initially, I was a little conflicted about the whole not provided affair.
As an analyst, I was upset that this change would hurt my ability to analyze the effectiveness of my beloved search engine optimization (SEO) efforts – which are really all about finding the right users using optimal content strategies.
But it is difficult to not look at the wider picture. Repressive (and some not-overtly repressive) regimes around the world aggressively monitor user search behavior (and more). This can place many of our peer citizens in grave danger. As a citizen of the world, I was happy that Google and Yahoo! want to protect user privacy.
I'm a lot less conflicted now. I've gone through the five stages in the Kubler-Ross model. Besides, I've also come to realize that there is a lot I can still do!
In this post I want to share four angles on secure search:
1. Implications of Secure Search Decision.
2. What Is Not Going Away. #silverlinings
3. Alternatives For Keyword Data Analysis.
4. Possible Future Solutions.
While not provided is not an optimal scenario, you'll see
that things are not as bad as initial impressions might indicate, yes
there are new challenges, but we also have some alternative solutions,
and realize that the SEO industry is not done innovating. Ready?2. What Is Not Going Away. #silverlinings
3. Alternatives For Keyword Data Analysis.
4. Possible Future Solutions.
1. Implications of Secure Search Decision.
No keyword data in analytics tools.
We are headed towards having zero referring keywords from Google and, perhaps, other search engines.
Depending on the mobile device and browser you are using (for example, Safari since iOS 6), you have already been using secure search for a while regardless of the search engine you use. So that data has been missing for some time.
There are a number of "hacks" out there with promises of getting close enough keyword data, or for marrying not provided with some of the remaining data and landing pages. These are well meaning, but almost always yield zero value or worse drive you in a sub-optimal direction. Please been careful if you choose to use them.
No keyword data in competitive intelligence/SEO tools.
Perhaps you (like me) use competitive intelligence or SEO tools to monitor keyword performance. For example, for L'Oreal:
You can read this post to learn how these tools collect data: The Definitive Guide To (8) Competitive Intelligence Data Sources.
I really loved having this data. It was such a great way to see what competitors were doing or where I was beating them on paid or organic or brand or category terms. Sadly, it does not matter which tool you use. These tools will only show you a more distorted view of reality. Please be very careful about what you do with keyword data from these tools (though they provide a lot of other data, all of which was of the same quality as in the past).
[sidebar]
These changes impact my AdWords spend sub-optimally. A lot of the keywords I used to add to my campaigns came from the long, long tail I saw in my organic search data (I would take the best performers there and use PPC to get more traffic) and from competitive intelligence research. With both of these sources gone, my AdWords spend may take a dive because I can't find these surprising keywords — even using the tools you'll see me mention below! How is this in Google's interest?
[/sidebar]
No keyword-level conversion analysis.
We have a lot of wonderful detailed data at a keyword level when we log into SiteCatalyst or WebTrends or Google Analytics. Bounce Rates, % New Visits, Visit Duration, Goal Conversions, Average Order Value.
All this data will no longer be available for organic search keywords.
As hinted above, our ability to understand the long tail — often as much as 80% of search traffic — will be curtailed. We can guess our brand terms and product keywords, but the wonderful harvest of category-type, and beyond, keywords is gone.
Current keyword data is only temporarily helpful.
Remember: On a daily basis 15% of the queries on Google have never been seen before by the search engine. Daily! For all 15 years of Google's existence!
That is one reason the data we have for the last year or so, even as not provided ramped up, might only be temporarily helpful in our analysis.
Another important reason historical data becomes stale pretty quickly is that any nominally functioning business will have new products, new content, new business priorities, and all that impacts your search strategy.
Finally, with every change in the search engine interface the way people use search changes. This in turn mandates new SEO (and PPC) strategies, if we don't want to fail.
So, use the data you have today for a little while to guesstimate your SEO performance or optimize your website. But know that the view you have will become stale and provide a distorted view of reality pretty soon.
2. What Is Not Going Away. #silverlinings
While we are losing our ability to do detailed keyword analysis, we are retaining our ability to do strategic analysis. Search engine optimization continues to be important, and can still get a macro understanding of performance and identify potentially valuable keywords.
Aggregated search engine level analysis.
The Multi-Channel Funnels folder in Google Analytics contains the Top Conversion Paths report. At the highest level, across visits by focusing on unique people, the report shows the role search plays in driving conversions.
You can see how frequently it is the starting point for a later conversion, you can see how frequently it is in the middle, and you can see how frequently it is the last click.
From there, jump to my personal favorite report in MCF, Assisted Conversions.
We can now look at organic and paid search differently, and we are able to see the complete value of both. We can see how often search is the last click prior to conversions, and how often it assists with other conversions.
Selfishly, now we can show the complete value, in dollars and cents, we deliver via SEO.
[Bonus: For more on next steps and attribution modeling please see: Multi-Channel Attribution Modeling: The Good, Bad and Ugly Models.]
If you are interested in only the last-click view of activities (please don't be interested in this!), you can of course look at your normal Channels or All Traffic reports in Google Analytics.
This is a simple custom report I use to look at the aggregated view:
So from the perspective of reporting organic search performance to senior management, you are all set. Where we are out of luck is taking things down from here to the keyword level. Yes, there will still be some data in the keyword report, but since not provided is an unknown unknown, you have no idea what that segment represents.
Organic landing pages report.
Search engine optimization is all about pages and the content in those pages.
You can use a custom landing pages report (click that link to download) and apply your organic search segment to that report to get a view that looks like this:
See Page Value there? Now you also know how much value is delivered when each of these pages is viewed by someone who came from organic search.
So let's say you spent the last few weeks optimizing pages #2, #3 and #5; well, now you can be sad that they are delivering the lowest page value from organic search. Feel sad.
Or, just tell your boss/client: "No, no, no, you misunderstood. I was optimizing page #4!" : )
The custom landing pages report also includes the ability drill down to keyword level, just click on the page you are interested in and you'll see this:
Let me repeat a point. I've noticed some of our peer SEOs making strong recommendations to take action based on the keywords you are able to see beyond not provided. I'm afraid that is a career-limiting move. You have no idea what these words represent – head, mid, tail, something else – or what is in the blank not provided bucket. Be very careful.
Paid search keyword analysis report.
We all of course still have access to keyword level analysis for our paid search spend.
When you submit your keywords and bids, the search engine will match them against user search queries. In Google Analytics you have Keyword, in your AdWords report, as above, but if you create a custom report you can drill down from Keyword to Matched Search Query. The latter is what people actually type. So for "chrome notebook," above, if I look at the Matched Search Query I can see all 25 variations the users typed. This is very useful for SEO.
You can download my custom report, it is #2 in this post: Paid Search/AdWords Custom Reports
Beyond this, be judicious about what inferences you draw from your paid search performance. Some distinguished SEO experts have advocated that you should use the distribution of visits/conversions/profits of your AdWords keywords and use that to make decisions about effectiveness of your SEO efforts. Others are advising you to bid on AdWords and guesstimate various things about SEO performance. Sadly these are also career-limiting moves.
Why?
When you look at your AdWords data, you have no idea which of these four scenarios is true for your business:
If you want to stress test this,…. go back to your 2011 (pre-not provided) data for paid and organic and see what you can find. And remember since then Google has made sixteen trillion changes to how both paid and organic search work, and your business has at least made 25.
Don't assume that your SEO strategy should reflect the prioritizations implied by your AdWords keyword data. The reason SEO worked so well is that you would get traffic you might not have known/guessed/realized you wanted/deserved.
3. Alternatives For Keyword Data Analysis.
With not provided eliminating almost all of our keyword data, initially for some search engines/browsers and likely soon from all, we face challenges in understanding performance. Luckily we can avail ourselves of a couple of alternative, if imperfect/incomplete, options.
Webmaster Tools.
Here are the challenges Google's Webmaster Tools solves: Which search queries does my website show up for, and what does my click-through rate look like?
I know this might sound depressing, but this is the only place you'll see any SEO performance data at a keyword level. Look at the CTR column. If you do lots of good SEO — you work on the page title, url, page excerpt, author image and all that wonderful stuff — this is where you can see whether that work is getting you more clicks. You work harder on SEO, you raise your rankings (remember don't focus on overall page rank, it is quite value-deficient), you'll see higher CTRs.
There are a couple of important things to remember when you use this data.
If you go back in history and do comparative analysis for last year's data when not provided was low, you'll notice that your top 100 keywords in Google Analytics or Site Catalyst are not quite the same as those in WebMaster Tools. They use two completely different sources of data and data processing.
Be aware that even if you sort by Clicks (and always sort by clicks), the order in which these queries appear is not a true indication of their importance (in GA when I could see it, I would see a different top 25 as an example). The numbers are also soft or directional. For example, even with 90% not provided Google Analytics told me I had 500 visits from "avinash kaushik" and not 150 clicks as shown above.
Despite these two caveats, Webmaster Tools should be a key part of your SEO performance analysis.
It is my hope that if this is how search engines are comfortable sharing keyword level data, that over time they will invest resources in this tool to increase the number of keywords and improve the data processing algorithms
Our good friends at Microsoft also provide Bing Webmaster Tools, and don't forget the excellent Yandex Webmaster Tools. Take keyword performance data from anyone who'll give it to you reliably.
[Bonus]
1. Google's Webmaster Tools only stores your data for 90 days. If you would like to have this data for a longer time period, you can download it as a csv. Another alternative is to download it automatically using Python. Please see this post for instructions: Automatically download webmaster tools search queries data
2. GWT only shows you data for approximately 2,000 queries which returned your site in search results. Hence it only displays a sub-set of your query behavior data. The impact of this is in the top part of the table above, Impressions and Clicks. During this time period my site received 1,800k Impressions in search results, but GWT is only showing data for 140k of those impressions because it is only displaying 2,574 user queries. Ditto for Clicks. If I download all the data for the 2k queries shown in GWT, that will show behavior for just 8,000 of the 50,000 clicks my site received from Google in this time period. Data for 42,000 clicks is not shown because those queries are beyond the 2k limit in GWT.
Update: 3. In his comment below Jeff Smith shares a tip on how to structure your GWT account to possibly expanding the dataset to get more information. Please check it out.
Update: 4. Another great tip. Kartik's comment highlights that you can link your GWT account with your AdWords account and get paid and organic click data for the same keyword right inside AdWords. Click to read a how-to guide and available metrics.
[/Bonus]
Google Keyword Planner.
The challenge Google Keyword Planner solves: What keywords (user search queries) should my search engine optimization program focus on?
In the Keyword Planner you have several options to identify the most recent keywords — the most relevant keywords — to your website. The simplest way to start is to look for keyword recommendations for a specific keyword.
I choose the "search for new keyword and ad group ideas" section and in the landing page part type in the URL I'm interested in. Just as an example, I’m using the Macy's women's activewear page:
I can choose to look at the Ad Group ideas or the Keyword Ideas.
First, it tells me the keywords for which I should be optimizing this specific page. I can go and look at the words I'm focused on, see if I have all the ones recommended by the Keyword Planner, and if not, I can include them for the next round of search engine optimization efforts.
Second, I have some rough sense for how important each word is, as judged by Avg. Monthly Searches. The volume can help me prioritize which keywords to focus on first.
Third, if this is my website (and Macy's is not!), I can also see my Ad Impression Share. Knowing how often my ad shows up for each keyword helps me prioritize my search engine optimization efforts.
It would be difficult to do this analysis for all your website pages. I recommend the top 100 landing pages (check that the 100 include your top product pages and your top brand landing pages — if not, add them to the list).
With the advent of not provided we lost our ability to know which keywords we should focus on for which page; the Google Keyword Planner helps solve that problem to an extent.
You don't have to do your analysis just by landing pages. If you would like, you can have the tool give you data for specific keywords you are interested in. Beyond landing pages, my other favorite option is to use the Product Category to get data for a whole area of my business.
For example, suppose I'm assisting a non-profit hospital with its analytics and optimization efforts. I'll just drill down to the Health category, then the Health Care Service sub-category and finally the Hospitals & Health Clinics sub-sub-category:
A quick note of caution: As you play with the Keyword Planner, you'll bump into a graph like this one for your selected keyword or ad group ideas. It shows Google's estimate of how many possible clicks you could get at a particular cost per click.
Google Trends.
The challenge Google Trends tool solves: What related and fastest-rising keywords should I focus on for my SEO program?
Webmaster tools focuses us on clicks and the Keyword Planner helps us with keywords to target by landing pages. Google Trends is valuable because it helps expand our keyword portfolio (top searches) and the keywords under which we should be lighting a fire (rising searches).
Here's an example. I'm running the SEO program for Liberty Mutual, Geico, AAA or State Farm. My most important query is car insurance (surprise!). I can create a report in Google Trends for the query "car insurance" and look at the past 12 months of data for the United States.
The results are really valuable:
I can click on the gear icon at the top right and download a bunch more data, beyond the top ten. I can also focus on different countries, or just certain US states, or filter for the last 90 days.
I can also focus on different countries, or just some of the states in the US or only for the last 90 days. The options are endless.
There are two specific uses for this data.
First, I get the top and rising queries to consider for my SEO program. Not just queries either, but deeper insights like brand awareness, etc.
Second, I can use this to figure out the priorities for the content I need to create on my website to take advantage of evolving consumer interests and preferences.
If you have an ability to react quickly (not real-time, just quickly) the Google Trends tool can be a boon to your SEO efforts.
Competitive Intelligence / SEO Tools.
Competitive intelligence tools solve the challenge of knowing: What are my competitors up to? What is happening in my product/industry category when it comes to search?
SEO tools solve the challenge of knowing: What can I do to improve my page ranks, inbound links, content focus, social x, link text y, etc.?
There are many good competitive intelligence tools out there. They will continue to be useful for other analysis (referring domains, top pages, display ads, overall traffic etc.), but as I mentioned at the top of this post, the search keyword level data will attain a even lower quality. Here's a report I ran for L'Oreal:
There are many good SEO tools out there that provide a wide set of reports and data. As in the case of the CI tools, many other reports in these SEO tools will remain valuable but not the keyword level reports. As not provided moves toward 100% due to search switching to https, they will also lose their ability to monitor referring keywords (along with aforementioned repressive and sometimes not-so-overtly repressive regimes).
When the keywords are missing, the SEO tools will have to figure out if the recommendations they are making about "how to rank better with Bing/Google/Yahoo!" or "do a, b, c and you will get more keyword traffic" are still valid. At a search engine level they will remain valid, but at a keyword level they might become invalid very soon (if they’re not already)
Even at a search engine level, causality (in other words, “do x and y money will come to you”) will become tenuous and the tools might switch to correlations. That is hard and poses a whole new set of challenges.
Some of the analysis these tools start to provide might take on the spirit of: "We don't know whether factors m, n, and q that we are analyzing/recommending, or all this link analysis and link text and brand mentions and keyword density, specifically impact your search engine optimization/ranking at a keyword level, or if our recommendations move revenue, but we believe they do and so you should do them."
There is nothing earth-shatteringly wrong about it. It introduces a fudge factor, a risky variable. I just want you to be aware of it. And if you want to feel better about this, just think of how you make decisions about offline media – that is entirely based on faith!
Just be aware of the implications outlined above, and use the tools/recommendations wisely.
Let's try to end on a hopeful note. Keyword data is almost all gone, what else could take its place in helping us understand the impact of our search engine optimization efforts? Just because the search engines are taking keywords away does not mean SEO is dead! If anything, it is even more important.
Here are a couple of ideas that come to my mind as future solutions/approaches. (Please add yours via comments below.)
Page "personality" analysis.
At the end of the day, what are we trying to do with SEO? We are
simply trying to ensure that the content we have is crawled properly by
search engines and that during that process the engines understand what
our content stands for. We want the engines to understand our products,
services, ideas, etc. and know that we are the perfect answer for a
particular query.
I wonder if someone can create a tool that will crawl our site and tell us what the personality of each page represents. Some of this is manifested today as keyword density analysis (which is value-deficient, especially because search engines got over "density" nine hundred years ago). By personality, I mean what does the page stand for, what is the adjacent cluster of meaning that is around the page's purpose? Based on the words used, what attitude does the page reflect, and based on how others are talking about this page, what other meaning is being implied on a page?
If the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) can analyze my email and tell me the 32 dimensions of my personality, why can't someone do that for my site’s pages beyond a dumb keyword density analysis?
If I knew the personality of the page, I could optimize for that and then the rest is up to the search engine.
Crazy idea? Or crazy like a fox idea? : )
Non-individualized (not tied to visits/cookies/people) keyword performance data.I wonder if someone can create a tool that will crawl our site and tell us what the personality of each page represents. Some of this is manifested today as keyword density analysis (which is value-deficient, especially because search engines got over "density" nine hundred years ago). By personality, I mean what does the page stand for, what is the adjacent cluster of meaning that is around the page's purpose? Based on the words used, what attitude does the page reflect, and based on how others are talking about this page, what other meaning is being implied on a page?
If the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) can analyze my email and tell me the 32 dimensions of my personality, why can't someone do that for my site’s pages beyond a dumb keyword density analysis?
If I knew the personality of the page, I could optimize for that and then the rest is up to the search engine.
Crazy idea? Or crazy like a fox idea? : )
A lot of the concern related to privacy is valid, and even urgent
when these search queries are tied to a person. The implications can be
grim in many parts of the world.
But, I wonder if Yahoo!/Bing/Google/Yandex would be open to creating a solution that delivers non-individualized keyword level performance data.
I would not know that you, let's say Kim, came to my website on the keyword "avinash rocks so much it is pretty darn awesome" and you, Kim, converted delivering an order of $45. But the engines could tell us that the keyword "avinash rocks so much it is pretty darn awesome" delivered 100 visits of which 2% converted and delivered $xx,xxx revenue.
Think of it as turbo-charged webmaster tools – take what it has today and connect it to a conversion tracking tag. This protects user privacy, but gives me (and you) a better glimpse of performance and hence better focus for our organic search optimization efforts.
Maybe the search engines can just give us all keywords searched more than 100 times (to protect privacy even more). Still non-individualized.
I don't know the chances of this happening, but I wanted to propose a solution.
Controlled experimentation.But, I wonder if Yahoo!/Bing/Google/Yandex would be open to creating a solution that delivers non-individualized keyword level performance data.
I would not know that you, let's say Kim, came to my website on the keyword "avinash rocks so much it is pretty darn awesome" and you, Kim, converted delivering an order of $45. But the engines could tell us that the keyword "avinash rocks so much it is pretty darn awesome" delivered 100 visits of which 2% converted and delivered $xx,xxx revenue.
Think of it as turbo-charged webmaster tools – take what it has today and connect it to a conversion tracking tag. This protects user privacy, but gives me (and you) a better glimpse of performance and hence better focus for our organic search optimization efforts.
Maybe the search engines can just give us all keywords searched more than 100 times (to protect privacy even more). Still non-individualized.
I don't know the chances of this happening, but I wanted to propose a solution.
Why not give up on the tools/data and learn from our brothers and sisters in TV/Print/Billboards land and use sophisticated controlled experiments to prove the value of our SEO efforts?
(Remember: Using the alternative data sources covered above, you already know which keywords to focus your efforts on.)
In the world of TV/Radio/Print we barely have any data – and what we do have is questionable – hence the smartest in the industry are using media mix modeling to determine the value delivered by an ad.
We can do the same now for our search optimization efforts.
First, we follow all the basic SEO best practices. Make sure our sites are crawlable (no javascript wrapped links, pop-ups with crazy code, Flash heavy gates, page tabs using magic to show up, etc.), the content is understandable (titles in images, unclear product names, crazy stuff), and you are super fantastically sure about what you are doing when you make every page dynamic and "personalized customized super-relevant" to each visitor. Now it does not matter what ranking algorithm the search engine is using, it understands you.
Now its time for the SEO Consultant's awesomely awesome SEO strategy implementation.
Try not to go whole hog. Pick a part of the site to unleash the awesomely awesome SEO strategy. One product line. One entire directory or content. A section of solutions. A cleanly isolatable cluster of pages/products/services/solutions/things.
Implement. Measure the impact (remember you can measure at a Search Engine and Organic/Paid level). If it’s a winner, roll the strategy out to other pages. If not, the SEO God you hired might only be a seo god.
At some level, exactly as in the case of TV/Radio/Print, this is deeply dissatisfying because it takes time, it requires your team to step up their analytical skills and often you only understand what is happening and not why. But, it is is something.
I genuinely believe the smartest SEOs out there will go back to school and massively upgrade their experimentation and media mix modeling skills. A path to more money via enriching skills and reducing reliance on having perfect data.
There is no doubt that secure search, and the delightful result not provided, creates a tough challenge for all Marketers and Analysts. But it is here, and I believe here to stay.(Remember: Using the alternative data sources covered above, you already know which keywords to focus your efforts on.)
In the world of TV/Radio/Print we barely have any data – and what we do have is questionable – hence the smartest in the industry are using media mix modeling to determine the value delivered by an ad.
We can do the same now for our search optimization efforts.
First, we follow all the basic SEO best practices. Make sure our sites are crawlable (no javascript wrapped links, pop-ups with crazy code, Flash heavy gates, page tabs using magic to show up, etc.), the content is understandable (titles in images, unclear product names, crazy stuff), and you are super fantastically sure about what you are doing when you make every page dynamic and "personalized customized super-relevant" to each visitor. Now it does not matter what ranking algorithm the search engine is using, it understands you.
Now its time for the SEO Consultant's awesomely awesome SEO strategy implementation.
Try not to go whole hog. Pick a part of the site to unleash the awesomely awesome SEO strategy. One product line. One entire directory or content. A section of solutions. A cleanly isolatable cluster of pages/products/services/solutions/things.
Implement. Measure the impact (remember you can measure at a Search Engine and Organic/Paid level). If it’s a winner, roll the strategy out to other pages. If not, the SEO God you hired might only be a seo god.
At some level, exactly as in the case of TV/Radio/Print, this is deeply dissatisfying because it takes time, it requires your team to step up their analytical skills and often you only understand what is happening and not why. But, it is is something.
I genuinely believe the smartest SEOs out there will go back to school and massively upgrade their experimentation and media mix modeling skills. A path to more money via enriching skills and reducing reliance on having perfect data.
My effort in this post has been to show that things are not as dire as you might have imagined (see the not going away and alternatives sections). We can fill some gaps, we can still bring focus to our strategy. I'm also cautiously optimistic that there will be future solutions that we have not yet imagined that will address the void of keyword level performance analysis. And I know for a fact that many of us will embrace controlled experimentation and thereby rock more and charge more for our services or get promoted.
Carpe diem!
As always, it is your turn now.
I'm sure you have thoughts/questions on why not provided happened. You might not have made it through all the five stages Kubler-Ross model yet. That is OK, I respect your questions and your place in the model. Sadly I'm not in a position to answer your questions about that specifically. So, to the meat of the post …
Is there an implication of not having keyword level data that I missed covering? From the data we do have access to, search engine level, is there a particular type of analysis that is proving to be insightful? Are there other alternative data sources you have found to be of value? If you were the queen of the world and could create a future solution, what would it do?
Please share your feedback, incredible ideas, practical solutions and OMG you totally forgot that thing thoughts via comments.
Thank you.
PS: Here's my post on how to analyze keyword performance in a world where only a part of the data was in not provided bucket: Smarter Data Analysis of Google's https (not provided) change: 5 Steps. For all the reasons outlined in the above post this smarter data analysis option might not work any more. But if only a small part of your data, for any reason, is not provided, please check out the link.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Six Visual Solutions To Complex Digital Marketing/Analytics Challenges
So do you have a static AND dynamic strategy for your digital existence?
Occam's Razor
by Avinash Kaushik
Two things I love a lot:
1. Frameworks, because if I can teach someone a new mental model, a different way of thinking, they can be incredibly successful.
2. Visuals, because if I can paint a simple picture about something complex it means I understand it and in turn I can explain it to others.
This post is at the intersection of those two lovely things.
Each of the six visuals re-frames a unique facet of the digital opportunity/challenge, and shares how to optimally take advantage of the opportunity/challenge.
We'll start with digital at the highest strategic level, which leads us into content marketing, from there it is a quick hop over to the challenge of metrics and silos, followed by a recommendation to optimize for the global maxima, and we end with the last two visuals that cover social investment and social content strategy.
A vast expanse of our current existence.
All of the visuals are in the form of a venn diagram, though, as you'll see, I do take enormous liberties with the format. [As Orlando correctly points out in his comment, in taking liberties I've mostly created Euler diagrams. Venn diagrams are a subset of Euler diagrams, checkout the difference.]
Ready to learn, smile and cry (just a little)?
Let's do this!
#1: How to Win, Really Win, at Digital: One-Time PLUS Many-Time Relationships.
The most intense amount of effort companies put into their site happens at site launch or the yearly new product launch. Everyone gets excited, agencies are hired, content is scraped from product box-shots, prettiness is sprinkled everywhere and much happiness, represented by a gigantic sigh of relief, occurs.
All of that is good.
The challenge is that this annual, or semi-annual, update of the content or the website design, is a terrible way to win at digital.
All the stuff you've launched is great for showcasing your company
and its products. It delivers conversions when I visit your site once
and buy something. But beyond that engagement, that one-time
relationship if you will, there is no reason for me to ever come back.
Because you don't have anything updated on your website. If I remember
everything you sell, I might come back the next time I need something
from that everything. Or due to some incredible co-incidence if I bump
into your brand when I'm thinking of buying something from your
everything.
A secondary, under-appreciated, challenge is that search engines value freshness of content. Once you launch your site, it becomes stale in due course (from a organic search signal perspective). It impacts your organic rankings (even if there are tons and tons of factors that influence SEO results).
A final tertiary challenge is that in a world dominated by conversations and social, your static content rarely entices any new conversations. It is great that you've added a silly string of buttons to all your product pages, but there is hardly a reason for anyone to click on them. (Most of the time all they are is an ad for addthis or some other "free" provider of those buttons.)
If you want to truly rock digital, this is what your digital strategy should look like…
So do your periodic product launches/site refreshes. But almost all
your content energy should be poured into fueling the creation of dynamic content!
You should have an incredibly amazing blog for your company (more on
this below). You should have a robust strategy to earn compelling
product reviews. You should have a well defined strategy to create
videos and how-to content (constantly updated with solutions to new pain
points of customers). You should talk about how innovation works in
your company. Your employees should tell their stories. And so on and so
forth.
This constantly updated content provides me more reasons to visit your website and stay in touch with your brand. It is also immensely beneficial for search engine optimization (great content, delivered fresh, every day!). Finally it generates a constant stream of social amplification and social conversations!
So do you have a static AND dynamic strategy for your digital existence?
Patagonia is amazing at this. They have a fantastic website where I can buy fantastic stuff that I fantastically love. In addition to that they have amazing content like what you'll see at Patagonia Surfing, and they have a regularly updated awesome blog The Cleanest Line and so much more. As a result I have a one-time and a many-time relationship with the Patagonia brand.
Ditto for one of my favorite hotels in New York, The Standard. Great website for booking rooms and all that. But they also have a great blog/culture guide/all things cool and amazing sub-site called The Standard Culture. I have a time-to-time relationship with their brand (whenever I have to visit New York). I also have a many-time relationship with them because of all this amazing dynamic content – which ensures that I love the brand and that in turn always makes my hands type their url when I have to visit NYC! That is what you want.
I'll be remiss if I did not provide you with two examples of what magnificent product reviews look like.
I love the ones on Williams Sonoma, they are detailed and include a title, a rating, specification on cooking ability and length of ownership sections are my fave and an overall recommendation. They also have, for each review, social amplification buttons! I also love the reviews on Rent The Runway. Can't you just imagine how much value those 102 photos and huge number of reviews add? Not to mention how helpful they are to current or prospective customers!!
So what is your balance of static vs. dynamic? Is it as outsized as the second picture above? It should be.
It is the only way to win big.
#2: The Secret to Content Marketing Success.
Content marketing is all the rage these days. Everyone is contenting a lot of content about content marketing. There is even an institute about it.
On the surface it is hard to argue about the value of content. On paper, what could possibly go wrong with creating or curating content with an eye to driving sales or influencing current or future customers?
Nothing.
Except that most content deployed in the service of content marketing sucks. For two simple reasons: 1. It is actually really hard to create good content, you have to know a lot about the subject matter. 2. We simply can't help pimping ourselves/our products/our services.
When our current/potential customers encounter the fluff pieces which are glorified vehicles for our not so subtle pimping, they quickly see through both things leading to sub-optimal results. And depending on when you want to open your eyes and see reality, you end up realizing content marketing does not work.
Let me share with you my simple rule for creating content that markets itself.
When people ask me how I decide what I write about on this blog, my answer is that prior to launching this blog I'd decided a simple rule for myself. Only post content that is 1. incredible 2. of value to the audience and 3. sans pimping.
I've worked very hard to follow this rule every single time I post
something. The content here – and you are the ultimate judge of this –
represents what I consider to be something incredible that you
will find to be of value. I have a lot of other incredible things to
write, but if I believe you won't find them to be of value, it gets
killed. (I wish you knew how many posts I've discarded because they did
not meet that simple criteria!)
The rule impacts my work in other, big, ways. For example, if I did not have time to write something incredible of value, I've not written anything. The deadline comes and goes, if I have nothing, you get nothing. It is also the reason my posting schedule over the last five years has gone from twice a week to once a week to once every two weeks to once every three weeks. (Amazingly, the blog traffic has gone from 2k a month to 150k a month!)
Finally, I've never accepted ads on this blog. In the right nav you'll see two discreet sections with my books and my start up Market Motive. That could possibly be considered advertising. There are three posts out of 283 about my book, and just five that mention Market Motive. Very little pimping, because I respect your capability to see what I'm selling and buy it if you feel it is a fit for you. (And you have!)
I'm not unique in following the above visual. There are many, many others. People and companies. Waaaaay more successful than I can ever dream of becoming. If content marketing is their strategy, the common thread is always the same. Something incredible, of value, with the barest minimum pimping.
It is the only way to win big.
#3: Data, Data Everywhere and Yet We are an Abject Failure.
I work with many medium to large companies around the world. Every single one has an impressive array of tools, many of them even have an equally impressive array of analysts.
Yet a heartbreakingly huge number of them stink at a company level. By that I mean they might have some pockets of excellence, but overall their site stinks, their customer experience (end-to-end) is awful, and their digital strategy is, on the greatest possible day when every single star is aligned perfectly, adding 1/10th the value it should.
Why?
It is the simple combination of how each division/group of people inside, and sometimes outside (agencies, et. al.), the company are organized and incentivized (as in what metrics determine their bonus).
Acquisition is everything we do to attract traffic. Behavior covers
everything that happens after the person lands on our mobile or desktop
site. Outcomes are what happen just before the visitor leaves our site
(money to us, satisfaction to them).
Companies have an Email team and an SEO team and a PPC team and a Social Media team and a Display team and…. many teams for acquisition. They are often measured on impressions (or worse, "connections") and clicks. Then that is all they optimize for. They take zero responsibility for crappy landing pages, or even 404s on landing pages.
Then there is the "site team." Euphemism for we will do anything to keep the site up but really all we do is launch pages that someone will ask us for and we really don't know who is coming to the site or what is driving them there and we rarely speak to marketing or agency but the site is pretty cool, we think.
Finally, there is someone in IT responsible for running the cart and checkout process. It is unclear that what their bonus is based on, but it is rarely abandonment rates or task completion rates.
Depending on other variables, there might be someone who looks at conversion rates (usually sans a lot of other context).
Each might work on their own little circle, there is no incentive to look end-to-end, or even at the overlaps/hand-offs.
So fix that.
Make sure your executive dashboards obsess about acquisition, behavior and outcome metrics. Make sure that every single report you create has acquisition, behavior and outcome metrics (download this example: Page Efficiency Analysis Report).
Force each team to think end-to-end and you will incentivize the right behavior across your company.
It is the only way to win big.
[Bonus: Download nine additional custom reports, and a VP-level dashboard, I've created with ABO as a foundation, directly into your Google Analytics account: Occam's Razor Awesomeness ]
#4: Optimize for your Global Maxima: Obsess About Macro AND Micro Outcomes!
The average conversion rate for a typical top ecommerce site is around 2%. And sadly, we are not at the top, so we tend to do worse.
When we obsess only about conversion rates on our website, the problem is that that is an obsession with just 2% of the site outcomes. We end up looking at the world through a straw, and the best we can do is a lot less than the best we can actually accomplish.
This is not to say that you should not worry about conversion. You
should. But when your strategy looks like the one above, powered by
looking through a straw, you'll optimize for the local maxima.
That is not terrible. It is just not awesome. Your parents will always pat you on your head and say "Oh sweetie, you could have been something. Something so much more."
And who wants that? You want to live up to your fullest potential!
That means you'll have to care about your macro-outcome, the ecommerce conversion or your lead submitted conversion or donations made to your non-profit conversion. But you'll also have to care about your micro-outcomes!
Some of these micro-outcomes will directly lead to your macro-outcome. For example, people signing up for your email marketing list will convert in the near future. Or people who create wish lists, sign up for product alerts, watch product videos today etc. They are all signaling intent to convert.
But other micro-outcomes might not be directly related to a near future macro-outcome. For example, people who subscribe to your blog's RSS feed. Or people who follow you on social media or subscribe to your YouTube channel or sign-up to volunteer for your non-profit or download your utility marketing mobile app etc. All these outcomes bring people closer to your brand, an awesome outcome.
When you measure the success of your AdWords campaigns or your email
blasts or your Facebook ads or any other acquisition initiative, make
sure you report your macro-conversion rate. But don't stop there. Make
sure you report your micro-conversion rate as well. Teach your company
to optimize their digital strategy for a portfolio of outcomes, macro
plus micro. And if you compute economic value of digital – the value of macro plus micro outcomes – your career will be on the fastest possible track to fame and happiness!
Best of all, this will mean you are optimizing for the global maxima.
It is the only way to win big.
[Bonus: Learn more about macro and micro conversions as they apply to a B2B company, Texas Instruments, and a technical support site .]
#5: Rent or Own? The Optimal Social Media Investment Strategy.
This is a new trend amongst companies. Swept up in the fervor of Google+, Facebook, YouTube and other social platforms, they are massively shifting their resources (people, time, dineros) into their presence on these new platforms.
That in of itself is not a bad thing. Everyone knows there are a quadrillion people on Facebook. It is absolutely a valuable audience.
The bad thing is that all this seems to come at the cost of investing resources on efforts related to the company's website. So many companies have irrelevant posts by expensive employees on Facebook all day long (more on this below), and don't spent the little bit of money to create a mobile website. #arrrrrhhhhh
Remember, when you create a presence on Facebook, Google+, Sina Weibo, Vkontakte, you are renting.
You don't own the domain, you don't own the customer data, you don't
create/own the rules, you can't influence changes, you don't have a say
in how many characters you can type or how long your video can be or how
much creativity you can express. You play by their rules (after all you
are just renting).
This does not make those platforms any less valuable. But it is astounding silly to have your rented presence come at the cost of a platform you own!
Build your own magnificent platform first. Where you create the rules, you control the evolution, you own the customer data, you have a direct relationship with your audience, you get to decide what happens next (or if ever!), and there are no limits to your experimentation with creativity!
Once you nail your own existence, move on to nailing your rent existence.
And going forward, always forever remember the balance between own and rent. Outsized investment in own and an appropriate, demonstrated by the best social media metrics, investment in rent.
It is the only way to win big.
#6: The World's Greatest Social Media Strategy.
Why does L'Oreal Paris USA, a multi-billion dollar corporation with a marketing budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, have fewer followers than I do on Twitter?
Why is the talking about this brand metric for Avis rent-a-car less than half of what it is for my brand page (and I have 50,000 fewer Likes than they do!)? Remember, Avis is a corporation with thousands of employees in tons of countries.
Why does TravelZoo have 224k fewer Followers on Google+ than I do?
All these companies are big and magnificent, and I'm very small and inconsequential. So, why?
The answer is simple: this is their social media strategy…
They wake up everyday and, on the world's greatest channels for
conversations, they shout at people. Every single post they write, every
single tweet they send, is simply another variation of BUY IT NOW!
The challenge is, as the See Think Do framework emphasizes, a tiny, tiny, minority of the audience is there to buy anything. (If you need more proof, just see how poorly advertising performs on these platforms.)
Just because you are good at shouting on TV/Radio/Print/Display does not imply that that is what you do on social media. Even if you somehow manage to get a bunch of Likes/Followers/+1s, your conversation rate, amplification rate and applause rate will be pathetic.
So stop that.
These channels are awesome (also see visual #5 above). Here's the strategy that works…
Pimp your stuff sometimes – say twice a week. And if you can be
clever about it, like getting your customers to pimp for you, even
better.
Ninety-five percent of the time create conversations and try to add value to your customers/likers/+1ers.
Write about topics both of you are interested in. If you sell smoothies, talk about food, how to develop a great palette, travel, evolution, agriculture, the future of the planet… the topics are endless.
Provide utility. Share tips on how to make my life better. Share tips on a healthy lifestyles, exercise, wellness of children, latest relevant mobile apps…. the topics are endless.
Your customers have given you permission to interrupt their day. Don't suck at it. Be respectful of their attention. Create a warm space in their heart for your brand. Contribute something incredible, of value.
That is the only way to win big.
That's it. Six simple visualizations, and solutions, for complex marketing, analytics and life challenges.
As always, it is your turn now.
Is there a venn diagram that resonates more with you than others? Which one least reflects reality? What does your company's digital balance between static and dynamic content look like? What percent of your social contributions is BUY IT NOW? Does your company execute for visual number one or two for outcomes? How incredible and of value is your content marketing content?
Please share your wisdom, stories, critique, and praise via comments.
Thank you.
Occam's Razor
by Avinash Kaushik
Six Visual Solutions To Complex Digital Marketing/Analytics Challenges
Two things I love a lot:1. Frameworks, because if I can teach someone a new mental model, a different way of thinking, they can be incredibly successful.
2. Visuals, because if I can paint a simple picture about something complex it means I understand it and in turn I can explain it to others.
This post is at the intersection of those two lovely things.
Each of the six visuals re-frames a unique facet of the digital opportunity/challenge, and shares how to optimally take advantage of the opportunity/challenge.
We'll start with digital at the highest strategic level, which leads us into content marketing, from there it is a quick hop over to the challenge of metrics and silos, followed by a recommendation to optimize for the global maxima, and we end with the last two visuals that cover social investment and social content strategy.
A vast expanse of our current existence.
All of the visuals are in the form of a venn diagram, though, as you'll see, I do take enormous liberties with the format. [As Orlando correctly points out in his comment, in taking liberties I've mostly created Euler diagrams. Venn diagrams are a subset of Euler diagrams, checkout the difference.]
Ready to learn, smile and cry (just a little)?
Let's do this!
#1: How to Win, Really Win, at Digital: One-Time PLUS Many-Time Relationships.
The most intense amount of effort companies put into their site happens at site launch or the yearly new product launch. Everyone gets excited, agencies are hired, content is scraped from product box-shots, prettiness is sprinkled everywhere and much happiness, represented by a gigantic sigh of relief, occurs.
All of that is good.
The challenge is that this annual, or semi-annual, update of the content or the website design, is a terrible way to win at digital.
A secondary, under-appreciated, challenge is that search engines value freshness of content. Once you launch your site, it becomes stale in due course (from a organic search signal perspective). It impacts your organic rankings (even if there are tons and tons of factors that influence SEO results).
A final tertiary challenge is that in a world dominated by conversations and social, your static content rarely entices any new conversations. It is great that you've added a silly string of buttons to all your product pages, but there is hardly a reason for anyone to click on them. (Most of the time all they are is an ad for addthis or some other "free" provider of those buttons.)
If you want to truly rock digital, this is what your digital strategy should look like…
This constantly updated content provides me more reasons to visit your website and stay in touch with your brand. It is also immensely beneficial for search engine optimization (great content, delivered fresh, every day!). Finally it generates a constant stream of social amplification and social conversations!
So do you have a static AND dynamic strategy for your digital existence?
Patagonia is amazing at this. They have a fantastic website where I can buy fantastic stuff that I fantastically love. In addition to that they have amazing content like what you'll see at Patagonia Surfing, and they have a regularly updated awesome blog The Cleanest Line and so much more. As a result I have a one-time and a many-time relationship with the Patagonia brand.
Ditto for one of my favorite hotels in New York, The Standard. Great website for booking rooms and all that. But they also have a great blog/culture guide/all things cool and amazing sub-site called The Standard Culture. I have a time-to-time relationship with their brand (whenever I have to visit New York). I also have a many-time relationship with them because of all this amazing dynamic content – which ensures that I love the brand and that in turn always makes my hands type their url when I have to visit NYC! That is what you want.
I'll be remiss if I did not provide you with two examples of what magnificent product reviews look like.
I love the ones on Williams Sonoma, they are detailed and include a title, a rating, specification on cooking ability and length of ownership sections are my fave and an overall recommendation. They also have, for each review, social amplification buttons! I also love the reviews on Rent The Runway. Can't you just imagine how much value those 102 photos and huge number of reviews add? Not to mention how helpful they are to current or prospective customers!!
So what is your balance of static vs. dynamic? Is it as outsized as the second picture above? It should be.
It is the only way to win big.
#2: The Secret to Content Marketing Success.
Content marketing is all the rage these days. Everyone is contenting a lot of content about content marketing. There is even an institute about it.
On the surface it is hard to argue about the value of content. On paper, what could possibly go wrong with creating or curating content with an eye to driving sales or influencing current or future customers?
Nothing.
Except that most content deployed in the service of content marketing sucks. For two simple reasons: 1. It is actually really hard to create good content, you have to know a lot about the subject matter. 2. We simply can't help pimping ourselves/our products/our services.
When our current/potential customers encounter the fluff pieces which are glorified vehicles for our not so subtle pimping, they quickly see through both things leading to sub-optimal results. And depending on when you want to open your eyes and see reality, you end up realizing content marketing does not work.
Let me share with you my simple rule for creating content that markets itself.
When people ask me how I decide what I write about on this blog, my answer is that prior to launching this blog I'd decided a simple rule for myself. Only post content that is 1. incredible 2. of value to the audience and 3. sans pimping.
The rule impacts my work in other, big, ways. For example, if I did not have time to write something incredible of value, I've not written anything. The deadline comes and goes, if I have nothing, you get nothing. It is also the reason my posting schedule over the last five years has gone from twice a week to once a week to once every two weeks to once every three weeks. (Amazingly, the blog traffic has gone from 2k a month to 150k a month!)
Finally, I've never accepted ads on this blog. In the right nav you'll see two discreet sections with my books and my start up Market Motive. That could possibly be considered advertising. There are three posts out of 283 about my book, and just five that mention Market Motive. Very little pimping, because I respect your capability to see what I'm selling and buy it if you feel it is a fit for you. (And you have!)
I'm not unique in following the above visual. There are many, many others. People and companies. Waaaaay more successful than I can ever dream of becoming. If content marketing is their strategy, the common thread is always the same. Something incredible, of value, with the barest minimum pimping.
It is the only way to win big.
#3: Data, Data Everywhere and Yet We are an Abject Failure.
I work with many medium to large companies around the world. Every single one has an impressive array of tools, many of them even have an equally impressive array of analysts.
Yet a heartbreakingly huge number of them stink at a company level. By that I mean they might have some pockets of excellence, but overall their site stinks, their customer experience (end-to-end) is awful, and their digital strategy is, on the greatest possible day when every single star is aligned perfectly, adding 1/10th the value it should.
Why?
It is the simple combination of how each division/group of people inside, and sometimes outside (agencies, et. al.), the company are organized and incentivized (as in what metrics determine their bonus).
Companies have an Email team and an SEO team and a PPC team and a Social Media team and a Display team and…. many teams for acquisition. They are often measured on impressions (or worse, "connections") and clicks. Then that is all they optimize for. They take zero responsibility for crappy landing pages, or even 404s on landing pages.
Then there is the "site team." Euphemism for we will do anything to keep the site up but really all we do is launch pages that someone will ask us for and we really don't know who is coming to the site or what is driving them there and we rarely speak to marketing or agency but the site is pretty cool, we think.
Finally, there is someone in IT responsible for running the cart and checkout process. It is unclear that what their bonus is based on, but it is rarely abandonment rates or task completion rates.
Depending on other variables, there might be someone who looks at conversion rates (usually sans a lot of other context).
Each might work on their own little circle, there is no incentive to look end-to-end, or even at the overlaps/hand-offs.
So fix that.
Make sure your executive dashboards obsess about acquisition, behavior and outcome metrics. Make sure that every single report you create has acquisition, behavior and outcome metrics (download this example: Page Efficiency Analysis Report).
Force each team to think end-to-end and you will incentivize the right behavior across your company.
It is the only way to win big.
[Bonus: Download nine additional custom reports, and a VP-level dashboard, I've created with ABO as a foundation, directly into your Google Analytics account: Occam's Razor Awesomeness ]
#4: Optimize for your Global Maxima: Obsess About Macro AND Micro Outcomes!
The average conversion rate for a typical top ecommerce site is around 2%. And sadly, we are not at the top, so we tend to do worse.
When we obsess only about conversion rates on our website, the problem is that that is an obsession with just 2% of the site outcomes. We end up looking at the world through a straw, and the best we can do is a lot less than the best we can actually accomplish.
That is not terrible. It is just not awesome. Your parents will always pat you on your head and say "Oh sweetie, you could have been something. Something so much more."
And who wants that? You want to live up to your fullest potential!
That means you'll have to care about your macro-outcome, the ecommerce conversion or your lead submitted conversion or donations made to your non-profit conversion. But you'll also have to care about your micro-outcomes!
Some of these micro-outcomes will directly lead to your macro-outcome. For example, people signing up for your email marketing list will convert in the near future. Or people who create wish lists, sign up for product alerts, watch product videos today etc. They are all signaling intent to convert.
But other micro-outcomes might not be directly related to a near future macro-outcome. For example, people who subscribe to your blog's RSS feed. Or people who follow you on social media or subscribe to your YouTube channel or sign-up to volunteer for your non-profit or download your utility marketing mobile app etc. All these outcomes bring people closer to your brand, an awesome outcome.
Best of all, this will mean you are optimizing for the global maxima.
It is the only way to win big.
[Bonus: Learn more about macro and micro conversions as they apply to a B2B company, Texas Instruments, and a technical support site .]
#5: Rent or Own? The Optimal Social Media Investment Strategy.
This is a new trend amongst companies. Swept up in the fervor of Google+, Facebook, YouTube and other social platforms, they are massively shifting their resources (people, time, dineros) into their presence on these new platforms.
That in of itself is not a bad thing. Everyone knows there are a quadrillion people on Facebook. It is absolutely a valuable audience.
The bad thing is that all this seems to come at the cost of investing resources on efforts related to the company's website. So many companies have irrelevant posts by expensive employees on Facebook all day long (more on this below), and don't spent the little bit of money to create a mobile website. #arrrrrhhhhh
Remember, when you create a presence on Facebook, Google+, Sina Weibo, Vkontakte, you are renting.
This does not make those platforms any less valuable. But it is astounding silly to have your rented presence come at the cost of a platform you own!
Build your own magnificent platform first. Where you create the rules, you control the evolution, you own the customer data, you have a direct relationship with your audience, you get to decide what happens next (or if ever!), and there are no limits to your experimentation with creativity!
And going forward, always forever remember the balance between own and rent. Outsized investment in own and an appropriate, demonstrated by the best social media metrics, investment in rent.
It is the only way to win big.
#6: The World's Greatest Social Media Strategy.
Why does L'Oreal Paris USA, a multi-billion dollar corporation with a marketing budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, have fewer followers than I do on Twitter?
Why is the talking about this brand metric for Avis rent-a-car less than half of what it is for my brand page (and I have 50,000 fewer Likes than they do!)? Remember, Avis is a corporation with thousands of employees in tons of countries.
Why does TravelZoo have 224k fewer Followers on Google+ than I do?
All these companies are big and magnificent, and I'm very small and inconsequential. So, why?
The answer is simple: this is their social media strategy…
The challenge is, as the See Think Do framework emphasizes, a tiny, tiny, minority of the audience is there to buy anything. (If you need more proof, just see how poorly advertising performs on these platforms.)
Just because you are good at shouting on TV/Radio/Print/Display does not imply that that is what you do on social media. Even if you somehow manage to get a bunch of Likes/Followers/+1s, your conversation rate, amplification rate and applause rate will be pathetic.
So stop that.
These channels are awesome (also see visual #5 above). Here's the strategy that works…
Ninety-five percent of the time create conversations and try to add value to your customers/likers/+1ers.
Write about topics both of you are interested in. If you sell smoothies, talk about food, how to develop a great palette, travel, evolution, agriculture, the future of the planet… the topics are endless.
Provide utility. Share tips on how to make my life better. Share tips on a healthy lifestyles, exercise, wellness of children, latest relevant mobile apps…. the topics are endless.
Your customers have given you permission to interrupt their day. Don't suck at it. Be respectful of their attention. Create a warm space in their heart for your brand. Contribute something incredible, of value.
That is the only way to win big.
That's it. Six simple visualizations, and solutions, for complex marketing, analytics and life challenges.
As always, it is your turn now.
Is there a venn diagram that resonates more with you than others? Which one least reflects reality? What does your company's digital balance between static and dynamic content look like? What percent of your social contributions is BUY IT NOW? Does your company execute for visual number one or two for outcomes? How incredible and of value is your content marketing content?
Please share your wisdom, stories, critique, and praise via comments.
Thank you.
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